


The Anarchist's Corpsebook

by Oceanbreeze7



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex & the red swim trunks, Alex Rider is So Done, Gen, Humor, Is it necrophilia if they're reanimated?, Slice of Life, Tom Harris is a good friend, Yassen Gregorovich Lives, which is ironic since he is DEAD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27607280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceanbreeze7/pseuds/Oceanbreeze7
Summary: Alex and Tom needed a fun weekend activity, and accidentally ventured recreationally into necromancy… or at least enough of it to bring 17-year-old Yassen Gregorovich’s soul back from wherever souls go.Except Alex doesn't know who Yassenis.Tom doesn't know how a corpse isalive(and sleeping with his best friend)AndYassendoesn't realize that he'sdead.
Relationships: Tom Harris & Alex Rider, Tom Harris & Yassen Gregorovich, Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Comments: 8
Kudos: 101
Collections: AR Fic Exchange 2020





	The Anarchist's Corpsebook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galimau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galimau/gifts).



> The original prompt is this: Prompt 1: Magic AU - Alex, needing answers about what actually happened with his family and his father’s past in SCORPIA and MI6 dabbles recreationally in necromancy… or at least enough of it to bring Yassen Gregorovich’s soul back from wherever souls go. Once he’s there, Alex… can’t quite muster the commitment to send him away again. 
> 
> I took some creative liberties with it and made it more dramatic and humorous, because I could. Behold, awkward baby Yassen.
> 
> This story was posted anonymously and now that the window is closed, it's time to reveal the mastermind behind it! I hope you all enjoy!

Biggin Hill was a nice little community, built more out of old village-style houses and occasional minor backyard sheep pastures. There were a handful of schools, young children gathered up and herded along in little busses that chugged along the winding streets. There was only one road, a mighty quick one that bisected the little village and headed due north for the outer limits of London. People in Biggin Hill and the adjacent villages, like Tatsfield and Hawley’s Corner, had a similar system. Life was simple and slow in Westerhem, a great improvement from Chelsea or even downtown London in her smoggy glory.

Tom was a simple person with simple needs. He hadn’t considered ever being accepted into any fancy private schools beyond that of his basic A-levels. He didn’t ever consider chasing after a high academics lifestyle, maybe he could settle down and join a local football team. Kick back on Saturdays in a pub, maybe pick up a dog somewhere in between.

His lifestyle would have easily been as such, if not for the bloody freak of fate known as his best friend, Alex Rider.

Don’t misunderstand- Tom loved his best friend. He loved him, and all his ridiculous personality quirks and oddities. Alex left for long periods of time for work (which they both knew was actually codeword for terrorism, but saying such things in public got them kicked out from pubs) so, when he was home, he expressed his individuality through the worst means.

“Really?” Tom said, rhetorically and long-suffering. Alex, clothed only in a large jumper and red swim trunks Tom distinctly remember Alex getting almost a  _ decade ago,  _ ignored him. Tom could accept many things, like Alex’s weird ferocity to wearing skimpy trousers because apparently on work, the tight armoured clothing gave him arse zits and ingrown thigh hair. 

Logical, sound, Tom couldn’t argue with that. What Tom could argue with, was half of the milk being poured directly into the cereal box and blended around with one of the mixing spoons.

“What did you expect?” Alex asked him, huffing and slapping the soggy cereal with a wet  _ thwack!  _ “I’m  _ hungry.” _

“Not the  _ milk,”  _ Tom argued, watching it pour into the cardboard box and plastic sheath like a crummy magic trick. “I drink that!”

“Well so do I!” Alex argued, propping his little red arse on the counter to fish out an oversized spoon worth of bran and caramel tinted milk. A moment of contemplation, Tom’s friend struggled through basic geometry and spatial properties as he proceeded to ram the spoon directly into his mouth. Tom watched as Alex choked, spluttering on milk and cereal before he hacked it out onto the floor. Miserably, Alex said; “my  _ spoon _ is too  _ big. _ ”

Their dog, mostly Tom’s dog and Alex’s nephew with how often Alex was on work trips, waddled over to look at the lob of wet cereal. The bulldog, Louie, attempted to eat the cereal, snorting and gurgling around its smashed face like it too was dying.

“No Louie!” Alex crooned, setting the bulging cylinder of the cereal box on the counter to scoop up the little animal. Louie grunted, wheezing and drooling a little as both eyes bulged. Alex shushed him, crooning baby-speak and little rocking bounces, “no you don’t! No cereal for my cute little inbred king!”

“Don’t talk to your nephew that way,” Tom argued, stealing a much more reasonable small spoon of Alex’s cereal mess. “He can’t help that he was adopted like that.”

“I love my little inbred son oh yes I do,” Alex crooned, poking Louie’s upturned smashed muzzle with one finger, “the  _ best  _ king of England, oh yes he is. I’d take orders from you anyway,  _ oh yes I would.” _

“A fair ruler,” Tom agreed, struggling with the cereal box. After a moment of contemplation, he hoisted the straining plastic liner to shift it into one of the available pitchers. Normally used for lemonade, it now housed cereal soup with a splash of Alex’s backwash.

“Only the best for my little king,” Alex continued, setting the dog on the ground carefully before patting his rump twice. Louie spun around, panting like a diesel engine, and demanded more rump scratches. A fool’s errand, the dog would never end if you started it.

“So,” Tom said, pouring them both a bowl before pouring a splattering quarter cup all over the floor. Alex jumped over the puddle, Louie became so excited he fell  _ into  _ the puddle, and all three ate their breakfast. Tom continued, saying; “you know that thing you had me look into?”

Alex blinked, thinking hard between bites. He said, a little tentative and hopefully, “...goat yoga?”

“No,” Tom said, “not the goat yoga.”

“ _ Oh,  _ yeah!” Alex crowed, looking a little too bemused with the memory. “You mean that voodoo stuff?”

“You asked me to look into resurrecting the dead, and you’re just calling it  _ voodoo stuff?”  _ Tom said shrilly. He slapped his face, the resounding noise and sting prompting Tom to groan. “I had to ask a classmate, to her actual real face, how to do a ritual.”

“Did you?” Alex asked, grinning crookedly. “Oh man, how many candles were involved?”

“Four, not that you’d care,” Tom sniffled pointedly. Alex threw his head back with a mighty cackle. Tom scowled, as Louie the king and champion of slutting himself for attention, barked along.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Alex beamed, only half of his teeth on display with the lopsided shift of his head. “Did you actually burn my hair like you said you would?”

“Oh I burned your entire hairbrush, mate,” Tom said. He smacked his fist into his open palm playfully, shouting, “I burned your blood from those tissues when you walked into the door! And those stitches you made me pull out of your eyebrow last year.”

“How rude, I really  _ liked  _ those stitches,” Alex teased back, not looking distressed. “I wonder if ghosts or goblins like the taste of burned stitches. Really gives them a kick, spice of life.”

“You’re insufferable,” Tom accused. Louie, almost perfectly on cue, barked.

* * *

Alex was on vacation, being paid to kick back and do anything besides stupid things. Tom learned through the near-decade he’d known Alex, that paying him to stay out of trouble wouldn’t last long.

Tom took this in stride, docking a small portion from Alex’s generous income to invest in the best medical devices the local pharmacy had on the shelves. The cloth slings, folding canes, a neti-pot used to drain Alex’s sinus’ after he snorted cinnamon like a true lunatic. 

Alex was on vacation, a happy holiday to rest a minor injury to his left shoulder. Not a proper injury, like a sprained joint or a bad fall in football. No, Alex separated his collarbone from his shoulder in an impractical decision to squeeze his body through a hole in a wall like a domesticated cat. A fracture could be fixed with a couple of bolts and rods and a good smack to Alex’s face. His collarbone not paying rent and getting kicked out like a bad tenant was truly an Alex problem.

Alex despised his sling with a fierce level of rage. The sling wasn’t so much to keep his arm limp but to keep him from jostling his shoulder itself. Louie of course became a frequent flier of Alex’s chicken-wing, poking his head out and whistling his signature wheeze as Alex carried him around. Beyond simple arguments about the necessity of wearing the best fifteen pounds could buy, life was easy.

The door muted sound, generally thick wood tended to do so, but the dull thump of a fist made Louie freak out like a woodchipper chomping down on a rebar wire. Alex crooned in either French or one of his too many languages as Louie nearly died from a pulmonary embolism.

“Pizza?” Alex asked in accented English, not bothering to get up.

“Pizza,” Tom agreed, stumbling to his feet and waddling to the front door. Tom had known Alex for nearly eleven years, so he really wasn’t surprised at the sight of an injured man scowling at the door. Tom blinked once at the man, looking ramshackle and a little bit pissed off like all of Alex’s coworkers tended to, and asked, “you dying?”

The man, roughly their age Tom presumed tentatively, glared at him. (After the incident with the man in prosthetics that pulled off a  _ very convincing  _ young woman...Tom liked to be cautious.)

The man asked, icily cold, “do you want to be?”

“Ah, yeah you’re here for Alex,” Tom agreed unconcerned. He gestured one thumb over his shoulder but didn’t open the door any further. He said, stalling just a bit to make sure he wasn’t inviting a stranger inside, “I thought Alex was on vacation. He’s on recovery, you know that.”

The man, teenager,  _ maybe a woman with good makeup, _ glowered. Tom’s porch lights softened their features, but the harsh cheekbones and unfairly chiselled lips stood out more with the pout. Tom waited patiently, he was best friends with Alex bloody Rider, he could wait all day.

Tom lifted his eyebrows after a moment of silent staring, secretly filled with glee as the other cracked under the blatant disinterest.

“...How did I get here?” they demanded curtly. Tom couldn’t identify the accent the other used, it wobbled uncertainly between a few and ended up sounding like an American actor attempting improv. Weirdly, it worked effectively to mask any sort of identifying features.

Then, Tom realized what the other said and internally groaned. He said, falsely optimistic, “well, I’m guessing you walked?”

The man glared sharper, hands curling into small fists. He was shorter than Tom but loomed like a very pissed off bobcat. They said, “you are not home alone, but I  _ will  _ force you to answer my question.”

“You think you can get  _ Alex  _ to do what you want?” Tom asked, voice turning shrill in disbelief. He shook his head unconsciously, stunned. “You are...very confused, mate. Who are you, are you the sulking one? I thought Alex said you were Scottish...and like, in a midlife crisis.”

The stranger didn’t shift or change his face in any way, but his demeanour somehow altered in a way Tom couldn’t place. Tom tested the waters, guessing based on Alex’s drunk moaning. “So uh, you’re blond and scrawny...are you uh...Snake?”

The man’s glare and frown transformed into a scowl. Tom trained his skill for reading poker faces and spies through the careful art of Alex, Wolf (when he came over to make sure Alex didn’t rebreak his leg) and Tom playing strip poker. Tom knew how to read government agents, and could tell this man was very confused and  _ not  _ Snake.

“Damn, my bad,” Tom apologized quickly. “Which one are you then? Please tell me you aren’t a terrorist. Got a nickname I can use? Other fun animals? Walrus? Antelope? Muskrat?”

“No,” they deadpanned sharply. “You’re familiar with operatives but untrained.”

“Yeah, my best mate is one,” Tom agreed carefully. If shit hit the fan, Tom had complete faith that Alex could literally do something and drop the ceiling fan on the home invader.

The man’s frown turned more genuine, expressing the first bit of honest confusion. It was a small flash, but one that made Tom’s heart throb in his weird instincts to swaddle all the confused little government spies. Tom opened the door, letting the warm light and air creep out just like his heating bill would creep up- and Tom said, “come on in. Pizza will be here in a bit and you look like you’re hiding a shiv spot or something. What’s your name then?”

The young man shifted, shoulders adjusting slightly before he confessed in a smooth flat voice, “my operative title is Cossack.”

Tom tried to understand where the hell that fit in with the weird animal theme Alex told him about. “Huh isn’t that like...horse riders or something?”

“Something,” Cossack said sharply, looking prepared for Tom to pry further.

“Wow,” Tom said, leaning against the door to open it further and allow the other inside, “ _ very  _ secretive. Well, come on in Cossack, I have Netflix, a cute dog, and a moron you can argue with.”

Cossack walked inside, his movements a low shuffle that Alex sometimes used after nightmares. He didn’t have an expression on his face, only a blank expression with light blue eyes and blonde hair bordering brown with hair grease.

Alex looked over the back of the couch, huffing once the couch support prevented his perfect visual field. He scowled, wobbling and grunting- Louie grunting as well with the flailing immobilized arm until Alex could see Tom and Cossack.

“Oh damn,” Alex said without any true concern. “No Pizza? Tom, you didn’t say you were ordering a  _ snack.” _

Cossack, bless his heart, didn’t react to the flirt in the slightest. Alex kicked forward, knees arching upwards to help him leap to his feet. He wobbled just enough to worry Louie who belted out a rasping rumble, then settled at the idea of sniffing a new person.

Alex padded over, his socks half removed and bunched on the arches of his feet, and tilted his head. He eyed Cossack up and down with interest, saying, “Tom, you have a thing for picking up strays?”

“How dare you insult Louie like that,” Tom huffed, then ignored the two metaphorically circling wolves and said, “this one is your kind. Said he’s called Cossack?”

Alex’s loose posture stiffened immediately, body curling warily around his precious nephew. Alex said, a bit warily, “I’m on vacation, no missions or someone is going to get stabbed.”

Cossack didn’t seem the type to be caught off guard, but he looked very much baffled. Glancing between the two, then a little longer on the television, he had the presence of a baffled hawk. Unable to do anything but glare, yet somehow being very perplexed.

“No stabbing,” Cossack agreed.

“Whoa,” Alex said, eyebrows lifting at Cossack’s voice. Alex used his free hand to pet Louie, soothing the little dog. “That’s...wow, really weird accent you got there. What was it, Arab-American cross over?”

Cossack shifted ever so slightly- and Tom found dread growing as he recognized the expression as a mutual interest. 

“Yes,” Cossack said after a pause. “It is...difficult.”

“No shite,” Alex agreed with a small chuckle. “Catalonian is my go-to, not quite Spanish but just enough it throws people off. You can speak whatever you prefer here, no bugs. You in the area and needed a safe house? Any field care?”

Cossack blinked twice quickly and straightened out of his predatory tension into a weird awkward stand. Alex mirrored him, just slightly taller.

“...It isn’t necessary,” Cossack said stiffly, voice fluid and melodic with a harsher guttural rasp. Tom nearly jumped at the difference, the blonde’s voice now full and hearty with no hollow resonance from false accents.

Alex paid it no mind, uncaring that they were housing a Russian, Ukrainian, or  _ something  _ in that area. Alex nodded helpfully, bobbing energetically with a timid smile. “I’m Alex, most people aren’t detoured here since I’m all,  _ yay! Anarchy!  _ But if you found this place then you’re free to crash for a while. Don’t mess with Tom, he’ll fuck you up when you’re sleeping.”

“I do not!” Tom argued, “ _ you’re  _ the one dognapping my son!”

“He’s my  _ dogson,”  _ Alex yowled across the room, before gesturing to the communal washroom. “Cossack, right? Come on, I got the good drugs.”

Cossack, awkwardly, followed.

* * *

When the Pizza came and the money crossed hands, Tom came back to his living room in disarray. Alex complained that the washroom wasn’t quite big enough (which is shite, the washroom was  _ enormous _ ), and often preferred to dress his wounds on the couch. There was a reason the material was black- too much blood and dog spit.

“Oi! No operation on my couch,” Tom complained without heat. He shifted aside bottles of iodine and alcohol, folding open the pizza boxes to reveal the haul.

Cossack tensed at Tom’s presence, eying him warily. Tom didn’t glance longer than a second to roughly guess what size clothes he’d take. Likely Alex’s, Tom was a bit too broad.

“Get your couch out of my surgery room,” Alex muttered under his breath, hands covered in black vinyl gloves (to coordinate with the couch) and dressing what looked to be an almost healed wound. It was a nasty thing, broad with stretched horizontal white scar tissue just below the Russian’s belly button stretching upwards just shy of his sternum. Towards the top, the wound looked angry and dark pink with open healing tissue, nothing infected based on the smell.

“I hope you got the bastard that hit you,” Alex said a little too casually. There was nothing to stitch, just some healing new skin that needed to be cleaned. The implications of such a wound were sickening, Tom couldn’t imagine how anyone would get that.

Then Alex said, casual and damning, “looks like whoever it was really gutted you.”

Cossack twitched slightly but didn’t explain it. He looked downwards at his own exposed torso, eyes hungrily surveying the injury. When Alex pulled away, grabbing cleaned gauze sprayed with yellow iodine, Cossack’s fingers traced the edge of the injury with a delicate touch.

Tom thought,  _ ‘it’s like he’s never seen it before.’ _

“Anyways, you’re fine,” Alex soothed like his arm wasn’t in a sling at all. “Healing just fine. Reckon surgery on your guts was a mess, a bloody pain, yeah?”

“I don’t remember it,” Cossack said, thick and rugged. His voice sounded hollow despite that- and settled weirdly between them.

“Drugs are amazing,” Alex agreed unconcerned. “So, the guest room is a bit of a mess, which means it’s my exercise room, but my bed’s big enough.”

“You’re going to share?” Tom asked, surprised. Alex rarely ever shared his bed, even with Louie. Sometimes his nightmares were violent, or it took time to wake up in multiple senses.

“Yeah, why not?” Alex asked. “I mean like... if I wake up swingin’ just strangle me.”

Cossack, equally mystified, said slowly, “I can do that.”

“See? Problem solved,” Alex explained. “I don’t share because I may wake up feral, but that means I can deal if  _ he  _ wakes up feral.”

“You didn’t share with Wolf,” Tom pointed out carefully.

Alex snorted and said, a little too boastful, “that’s because he couldn’t handle me. And he’s weirdly modest.”

That was true, both boys had a great time with Strip-Poker after learning that fact. Cossack accepted Alex’s shirt, sliding on with mechanical efficiency. Once settled, Alex slid into his personal space and threw his legs over the other’s lap. Louie slipped free of the sling and settled on Cossack’s lap, wheezing horrifically.

“Don’t feed him the sausage or he’ll burp on you,” Alex advised, passing a plate of food over. Cossack accepted it robotically and ate once Alex demonstrated it was fine.

Tom thought that something about this felt weirdly wrong.

* * *

Alex swept into the kitchen at a normal time, wearing a long housecoat lacking its tie. Similar to Alex tradition, he walked about in a pair of loose boxers, exposing his admirable muscles and his plethora of bruises and thigh zits from tactical holsters.

“Get those disgusting things out of my sight,” Tom said, smacking him with a dishtowel. Alex squawked, pawing one hand to deflect the cloth while stealing toast as quickly as possible.

“If you can’t handle me at my worst-,” Alex said, gurgling around the toast crammed into his throat. The words, nearly indiscernible, triggered Louie’s emphysema-barking from his perch on the counter.

Tom could almost forget Cossack, but not really. The young adult (thankfully not in disguise as Tom feared) appeared in the doorway to Alex’s room, looking too alert to having just woken. The morning sunlight gave life to his skin, bringing out the exact colour of his eyes and the blonde translucency to his recently washed hair. It also painted his throat a horrifically purple-red, where somehow both Tom and Alex missed it in the night’s dim shadows.

Alex ignored it, prancing around scantily clad like he always did, but Tom couldn’t. At first, Tom thought Cossack had tried to slit his throat and somehow failed. Then, he felt horrible at such a presumption and averted his eyes. 

“Hey Cossack!” Alex chirped with an obvious rasp, his throat raw from swallowing his toast like a boa constrictor. “You look better!”

He did, in a weird way. Less like a ghost and more human. Sure he had a horrifying red mark on his throat where a scar was still puffy and new, but his skin had a pale flush to it and his body less timid. Cossack and Alex likely had a late-night conversation, somehow finding middle ground. Cossack walked silently, smaller in Alex’s clothes and noticeably shorter than both Tom and Alex. Cossack greeted Tom with a simple nod, accepting a piece of toast but making no movement to eat it.

Louie scrambled to his feet, pawing at the air dangerously. Alex swept over, picking up the dog to deposit him in Cossack’s arms. Louie, delighted at the placement, licked Cossack’s arm.

“Enjoy the dog,” Alex said happily, searching for bottles of water. Cossack drank that, maneuvering to hold the dog like one would hold a baby whilst sipping from his water.

“So, Cossack,” Tom started, watching the other stiffen subtly. “What brings you into this area?”

“Tom, that’s probably confidential,” Alex argued, frowning slightly. “Maybe he just wanted time off?”

“After getting gutted? Okay, fair point.”

Cossack looked at his water silently, face blank in contemplation. He said, voice smooth and unbothered, “it was an oversight.”

“MI6  _ loves  _ to withhold information,” Alex agreed bitterly; his voice was chipper but the undertone spoke of something dark. Considering the sling and his recently separated clavicle, it left some obvious implications.

Cossack looked at Alex then with something new, something alarmed but equally interested. Alex looked away, seemingly casual but Tom knew his best mate well enough to tell when his almost-brother was blushing.

_ ‘Aw shite,’  _ Tom thought distantly. Something was very wrong with Cossack.

* * *

Alex was very vocal about his dislike for MI6. Often it came out in his abrupt dry commentary or blunt statements during company internet conferences. Three times now, Tom overheard Alex complain deadpan to his computer while nursing a suspicious injury. 

_ “Smithers says I can’t blow up your building, but I can sit in on meetings….he didn’t say I couldn’t say your ideas are bad.” _

_ “Yeah, this team sucks. We should destroy the government.” _

_ “It was MI6 military intervention that made that region so volatile in the first place. MI6 should be paying them reparations, not charging for our ‘protection’.” _

There were only so many times Alex could sit in his room and say, unprompted, “ _ revolution,”  _ before Tom realized that there was a  _ reason  _ MI6 didn’t send people to their house.

Cossack showing up felt suspicious to Tom, but Alex was too busy attempting to pose in his disaster-gay-underpants to truly recognize the oddity of it.

Tom didn’t have access to any MI6 registry, but he did have a cell phone with Wolf’s number on it. It took only a minute to send out a text, asking about another scrawny twink with a big throat scar that was gutted in the past few months.

Wolf got back to him, stating in government jargon interspersed with threats of interrogation yada yada, that  _ no  _ they didn’t use young adult-borderline-teenagers in missions, and  _ no  _ gutting wasn’t a usual thing.

* * *

Cossack stayed with them for half a week before he relaxed enough to admit his true name was Yassen. Still Russian, but a bit more realistic if exotic. Alex repeated it a half dozen times, struggling to get the exact accent right. Yassen watched, a bit interested as Alex continued to struggle with basic Russian.

“So, Yassen,” Tom said a little casually. “Who ended up gutting you? Like, is there a new megalomaniac we should be paranoid about?”

Yassen, stiffened and clammed up once again. Alex soothed him with flirty french, flirting, like a goddamn idiot. Yassen stiffly said, “a...traitor.”

“Oh,” Alex said, his expression darkening and turning serious. “Hopefully you weren’t close?”

“No,” Yassen said. 

They watched the television, commercials flickering past on mute. In the fading image of yet another allergy medication commercial, taking place at a mysterious outdoor concert, Yassen said quietly, “his name is Ash.”

Alex hadn’t been holding anything but if he were it would have fallen to the ground. Tom thought a distinct,  _ ‘oh yikes,’  _ and Alex was saying cooly, “don’t worry about Ash.”

Yassen’s neck snapped around so quickly, it was a miracle his throat didn’t open up again.

Alex looked ahead, jaw tense and eyes unwavering. He didn’t look at either Tom or Yassen, watching the television without processing the muted advertisements.

“Ash was a traitor,” Alex agreed with the subtle shift of dark humour. “I was there when he died. He won’t bother you.”

Yassen said, “Ash is dead.”

“Yep,” Alex agreed, popping his words uncaringly. “He was in Australia, but that’s likely where he got you. He died a while ago, or I guess he could have sent someone. I can report in if someone’s hunting you.”

“It’s dealt with,” Yassen said, voice similarly flat. Both looked straight forward, tense and furious with the memory of a dead man.

Tom knew about Ash and his subsequent demise. Ash had been close with Ian, a family friend to Alex’s uncle and deceased father. Ash came around a while after Alex was newly orphaned and took him on a special work trip unexplained. When Alex returned, he was a mess of volatile aggression, lashing out at others and imploding when he ran out of targets. His grades turned to shite, he slept through class, and wouldn’t cheat off Tom’s quizzes even when offered. That was years ago, but Tom didn’t forget the experience.

Alex had blind spots, as much as he denied it. Anything regarding Ash was a sore area that left him oblivious to everything else- Ash refused to say anything in his dying moments, only that he killed all the family Alex had. He pretended to be Ian’s friend- then killed him as well.

Tom knew Alex was capable of horrible things. Tom was thankful beyond words that Alex hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger.

“I’m glad,” Alex said bitterly, “Ash was...a piece of shit.”

Yassen laughed, a horrible sound of vicious dark bemusement. It made Tom’s skin crawl, simply because it reminded him of Alex after Ian’s funeral.

* * *

Tom wasn’t allowed to access the confidential files from MI6, but Yassen was driving him up a wall.

Something was  _ wrong  _ with Yassen, and maybe Alex couldn’t see it because they were kindred spirits. Yassen moved like Alex did, mirroring his actions and facial expressions on Alex’s bad days. The exercise room became a training room, where Yassen and Alex tussled furiously with careful attention to Alex’s injured arm. Tom walked into Yassen straddling Alex, choking him while Alex attempted to buck him off- and walked right out.

Yassen was wrong, uncanny like a wax museum. He stared at the television a little too long, didn’t recognize a ringing cell phone, and completely jolted at Alex’s wireless headphones. Either Yassen was sheltered, or a cryptid- or he was...Tom didn’t know.

Tom and Alex had a lot of trust and respect for each other, but sometimes, barriers had to be broken to save Alex from being an idiot. Instead of self-implosion, Alex was dying due to weird spy-crushes. 

They were sleeping in the  _ same bed. _

“It isn’t right,” Tom muttered to himself. Alex and Yassen left the house, going on a morning run like the adrenaline obsessed junkies they were. Louie, waddling after Tom who slid into Alex’s room, grunted loudly.

Alex’s laptop wasn’t protected by a password because it held enough firewalls and VPN to break into a bank. Tom opened it, swallowing down his guilt, and accessed the casual chatroom reminiscent of MySpace.

Alex didn’t chat to many people, since he was constantly promoting anarchy and the government doesn’t like that, but he  _ did  _ have a frequent chat with Smithers. The tech extraordinaire, the supplier of explosive devices. Alex had written two drunken haikus in his honour.

Tom hopped into the chat room, sent a single awkward message and waited impatiently. He sent,  _ ‘hi this is Tom and don’t b mad but Alex is being stupid agn.’  _

Smithers, the angel he was, sent back a response in less than forty seconds.  _ ‘Hello, Tom! Alex is always getting into trouble, isn’t he?’ _

A fair callout, but Tom really felt more anxious the longer he was on Alex’s computer. He  _ hated  _ going behind his mate’s back. He messaged quickly, worried under Louie’s judging and dismal eyes,  _ ‘can we talk off ths. Alex will b back.’ _

Tom waited, gnawing on his thumb. The messages, without any explanation, deleted themselves and Alex’s computer turned back into sleep mode. Tom’s phone chimed from the other room, lit up with a small smiling emoji.

“Smithers, you absolute madlad,” Tom whispered to himself, responding back with texting hardened fingers.  _ ‘So this dude came over and Alex is all <333 but hes weird.’ _

Smithers texted back far too quickly for even a competent teenager. Tom suspected something odd, like a weird dictation texting apparatus disguised as an avocado.  _ ‘Ah, young love! I must admit, Alex is quite the personality but I wish him the best! Is he looking for advice?’ _

Tom wondered where the hell he had gone wrong.  _ ‘No like hes a spy but was involved with Ash’ _

His phone immediately began ringing, which made Tom fumble and drop it. Instead of answering it, his phone answered  _ itself  _ on the speaker. Smithers, with a stressed British accent, asked worriedly,  _ “Tom? Please explain because that doesn’t have any logical-.” _

“I’m here just, slow down,” Tom scrambled, turning off the speaker to press it to his ear. Gross, ear sweat, but safer if the two came home. “He showed up like a week ago, we thought he was working in the area and needed a safe house. He’s...blonde? I mean, naturally, I think, his eyelashes are blonde. Blue eyes?”

_ “None of that will help me much,”  _ Smithers said a bit distressed.  _ “How did you say he knows Ash?” _

“Uh, he gutted him?” Tom asked, feeling weird saying that. “He has a throat scar, but Alex said it wasn’t from a knife. He may be Russian, but definitely a spy.”

Smithers was quiet for long enough Tom was worried the connection dropped. Smithers returned with steady calm words,  _ “Tom, I have no idea who that possibly is. I’m going to search a bit, and then contact you with what I find. I’m afraid Alex may have...well, fallen into a bit of a situation.” _

“Don’t I know it,” Tom snorted, relief tingling at his bones. “Thank you,  _ thank you.  _ It’s just...really weird. Things aren’t sitting right but I don’t think he’s  _ faking  _ anything.”

_ “Understood, and thank you, Tom.” _

Smithers disconnected and Tom clutched his phone desperately. He expected a message to come back in an hour, maybe two.

It took well into the afternoon when Yassen and Alex were discussing ordering Mediterranean food for dinner, for Tom’s phone to vibrate. As subtly as Tom could, he lifted his phone with a signal universally understood as  _ I gotta take this,  _ to which Alex nodded.

Tom stepped outside, using the phone light instead of the porch. Smithers texted him from an unknown number, somehow managing to send document files well beyond the messenger limit but who cared really.

Smither’s message came with a preface.  _ I don’t know how this is possible, but please be careful. _

Tom felt the stirrings of fear and opened the document.

> _ Decedent: [First name] YASSEN [Last name] GREGOROVICH [Title] COSSACK _
> 
> _ Case ID: 221640-CSSK _
> 
> _ Age: 17 (presumed) _
> 
> _ DOB: [UNKNOWN] _
> 
> _ Sex: MALE _
> 
> _ Race: Caucasian _
> 
> _ Area of Occupation: SCORPIA. [Ranking] Backer, international actor of Operative[REDACTED] [SEE ATTACHED] _

Tom felt a numb sense of disbelief intrude on his fingertips. The document was vaguely off-colour- scanned in somehow from a paper file. Tom didn’t know what to think.

“What the fuck do I do with this?” Tom whispered to himself, stunned. How was he to react to an  _ autopsy report? _

> _ Medical record authority: Violent _
> 
> _ Police notified: N/A [Name of district] N/A [Name of County] N/A _
> 
> _ Agents involved: Anthony Sean Howell [SEE ATTACHED] _
> 
> _ Cause of death: Evisceration due to Tactical Knife. Death at sight- injuries given by Operative Howell [SEE ATTACHED] _
> 
> _ Manner of Death: Homicide _
> 
> _ Legal complications: NONE _

Tom scrolled, to the next page.

How was he to respond to pictures of a living corpse?

* * *

The first thing Tom noticed, beyond the obvious documented site of where Yassen was  _ disembowelled,  _ was the same placement and scar across his throat. Secondary medical records suggested it was a recovery scar from a glancing gunshot, healed adequately.

Everything else matched- his height and hair and the freckles on the top of his shoulder. All documented by a mortician, confirmed by Tom watching Yassen eating shawarma on his couch.

Yassen was dead, but he was living and eating Tom’s food. He was sleeping in Alex’s bed and seemingly didn’t know his own state of affairs. 

Tom had a near existential crisis at the realization that a zombie was holding his dog. Then Smithers texted him with  _ more  _ alarming news, which consisted of the ‘see attached’ document the report kept referencing.

Tom wasn’t cut out for the world of spies. He didn’t know how to feel, reading the step by step updates for a mission lead by Ash, where something went wrong in Malta. A crime lord died ( _ because Yassen killed them _ ) and events evolved, and Ash ended up sinking a knife in Yassen’s gut.

Why? Why had he done that? The mission report said distinctly  _ not  _ to kill Yassen, which Tom couldn’t comprehend because apparently, Yassen was  _ with SCORPIA,  _ but randomly Ash changed his mind.

Ash ended up murdering Ian and implied he killed the rest of Alex’s family. Tom didn’t know the details, and neither did Alex when it involved how his parents died. But Ash was involved, and Ash killed Ian, and Ash apparently killed Yassen.

_ ‘Something is wrong,’  _ Tom realized sickly.  _ ‘Yassen worked for SCORPIA, but Ash killed him. Ash killed Ian, who worked for MI6. But, when Ash died, he was working for SCORPIA.’ _

So, either Ash was a traitor to everyone (likely), or there was some sort of risk Yassen had to Ash’s future.

Tom immediately sent back a note to Smithers, basically demanding to know more. The autopsy said that Yassen was a second- assistant to someone else. Who? Why was  _ that  _ profile not included?

Smithers responded the following morning with a simple statement,  _ ETA Tomorrow Night 0900 _

Well, that was ominous.

It was hard to go about the day like normal when you knew the information others didn’t. Tom didn’t know how Alex did it- the guilt and dread were tearing him apart. Was Tom supposed to tell Alex? Warn him somehow? Casually say,  _ “Hey! You know the guy you’re sleeping with? Well, apparently he’s dead because the guy that killed your uncle and family also killed him- oh I meant sleeping with him like, actually sleeping in the same bed. Haha...unless?” _

No, he couldn’t broach that subject. Not when Yassen was a legitimate assassin with a confirmed kill, shacking up with Alex. Sleeping in the same bed. Hogging all the leftover fried chicken as he had never experienced it before.

The Autopsy report wasn’t recent, that was the problem. It was dated so long ago- hell, Alex was  _ born  _ the year Yassen died. They didn’t know how old Yassen was on the record, but Alex was 19 and Tom was approaching his 21st birthday soon. Tom had a  _ son-  _ even if he was one flat fuck.

How different was age really? Yassen died 19 years ago and was somewhere around 17 years old. Unless you counted the time he was dead, in which case he’d be 36 and even then, Tom knew a classmate with a sugar daddy.

It was just... _ strange,  _ to think about. 

And now, Yassen had clued in that something was wrong. Tom didn’t know what gave him away, maybe his face shifted when Yassen walked out wearing Alex’s boxers with the healing disembowelment scar on display- something made Yassen’s face shift.

Then, Yassen was watching him for hours, picking and fracturing Tom’s composure with Alex none the wiser. Simply to escape the pressure, Tom vanished outside with a ball to kick some of his nervous energy. After a half-hour of repeated footwork, something dawned on him with the grace of a thrown brick.

_ ‘Yassen Gregorovich was summoned from the dead,’  _ Tom realized in a stroke of insight. The ball rolled away from him, his head revving far above its advised rate of performance. Tom whispered, “son of a bitch.”

In a minute, he had his classmate’s phone number on the dial, frantically waiting for ‘Tabitha, dark priestess of whatever’ to pick up.

_ “Hello?”  _ she said, voice slow and lazy. She always had an air about her like she were stoned and mimicking a gothic romcom.

“Hey, Tabitha, uh, it’s Tom,” he began awkwardly. Glancing towards his house, Tom spotted Yassen standing in the window. Watching him, freakily, like the weirdest housecat ever. Tom turned around quickly, trying not to giggle anxiously.

_ “Ah, yes...I foresaw you would call,”  _ Tabitha said. Tom thought she was really trying to ham up the bullshit. 

“Right right, uh, not to pull you from your crystal ball or anything,” Tom said quickly, “but you know when you did that weird candle demon summoning thing like, two weeks ago?”

_ “When we pierced the veil to commune with the souls of-.” _

“Yes yes, how can I send one  _ back?”  _ Tom asked quickly. “Like, there’s a certain soul pestering me and I really wanna send it underground, maybe six feet or a bit more. Do I have to flip the candles over or something?”

_ “Wait, wha-,”  _ she broke off, voice jerking out of her ‘mystic idiocy’. She sounded genuinely confused, spluttering before asking a bit shrill,  _ “you mean it worked? What? Are you pulling my leg? Ugh, look you don’t have to be an ass about it-.” _

“No no, I’m serious,” Tom said, “there’s a dead guy pulling moves on my best mate and I really don’t want to think about the  _ is necrophilia consent  _ chat.”

Tabitha paused on the other side, and warily asked through the tinny receiver on the phone,  _ “uh, I mean. The soul would be uh, related to you or significant. Because we used your hair. Uh, do you not...know it?” _

“No no, I used my mate’s hair! Not mine!”

Tabitha asked, verbally freaked,  _ “so your...friend...is shagging someone he’s...related to. Tom, uh, I don’t think the necrophilia is the problem here-.” _

Tom hung up. He wasn’t going to think any more about that.

Tom turned around, prepared to go inside, only to shriek at the sight of Yassen an arm’s length away holding his ball between two white knuckle grips. Yassen looked at him with flinty eyes, face flat but radiating hostility. He looked at Tom, lifted one lip in the slightest snarl and said, “you dislike me.”

Tom knew there was no recovery after a shriek of his high octave. He said, shakily because  _ holy shit Yassen was a literal assassin holding his football _ , “uh, yeah man. I uh, the spy stuff really freaks me out.”

Yassen tilted his head, birdlike, and said, “no, it doesn’t. You dislike me singularly.”

_ ‘Damn he’s good,’  _ Tom thought a bit hysterically. He reached out to take his ball back, Yassen threw it over his shoulder unnecessarily.

“You...you’re afraid of me,” Yassen realized, reading Tom’s face outright. Tom cringed, and Yassen’s expression darkened and flattened. Yassen’s hands were empty now; Tom had walked in on Yassen and Alex’s weirdly sexual-tension based sparring before to know Yassen could  _ totally  _ kill him.

“You are Alex’s friend,” Yassen said and began to circle Tom silently. The grass didn’t whisper, somehow the other walked with the softest of steps. The Russian said, “and yet, you are keeping secrets from him. No, you are conspiring  _ against  _ him.”

“I’m not!” Tom shouted, screeching again as Yassen reached out with one hand to grab Tom around his throat. He didn’t squeeze like Tom thought be would, instead, he  _ pinched  _ and it was  _ so much worse  _ because Tom felt the blood struggle in his throat.

Yassen said; “you are betraying your friend.”

Tom said; “ _ hrrgrr! _ ”

Alex said; “hold up, what the  _ bloody hell _ is going on here?” 

Tom wheezed in thanks, waving to Alex as Yassen released him. Alex, fluent in Louie’s wheezes translated the sound of Tom’s breathing and waved in return. He turned on Yassen sharply, face dark before he spat furiously, “Yassen, what the  _ fuck  _ were you doing?”

“He is going behind your back,” Yassen said, snatching Tom’s phone to hold outstretched with a single outright expression of disdain. Alex’s face faltered, looking bewildered as he accepted the phone, holding it awkwardly. 

“Alex I-” Tom started, and Yassen swung his leg like a bloody ballerina to smash into Tom’s solar plexus and knock the wind out of him.

Alex swallowed thickly and opened Tom’s phone. He stared at the blank text messages, showing no history and a blocked number. He exhaled shakily, and said, “you were messaging Smithers.”

“It’s not what you think-.” Tom choked out, his brain still hurting. “Alex, mate, it isn’t that!”

“Well, what am I supposed to think! You’re messaging Smithers behind my back, what are...are you talking about  _ me?” _

Tom spluttered, shaking his head frantically. Alex's eyes weren't wet, but the expression of betrayal was something horrible. 

On any other day or time, he wouldn’t have been so exposed and sensitive. The recent memories of Ash and the presence of Yassen likely left him more exposed. Alex looked so utterly distressed, he may just let Yassen kick him and then feel horrible afterwards.

“Alex-,” Tom croaked, rubbing his throat (choking via blood was  _ strange _ ) and holding one arm out, “do you remember two weeks ago? With that weird classmate?”

“Yeah?” Alex asked, still unsure. Yassen had the cool composure ready to punch Tom right then.

“Well, it worked,” Tom squeaked, wetting his lips and shying away from Yassen’s glower. “It uh, I was trying to make sure that it wasn’t-.”

“Tom that was some weird witch thing-.”

“He’s  _ dead!”  _ Tom shouted, a bit too shrill. Alex balked and Tom stuttered his explanation with a little flailing, “he’s actually dead! Like, very dead! I was worried and I wanted to find reports and-.”

“Tom stop lying!”

Tom struggled to his feet, a bit wobbly and very afraid as he pointed entirely to Yassen. He shouted, “Mate! His name is Yassen Gregorovich! He’s like, literally dead! He died nineteen years ago! Ash gutted him!”

If Tom were any other person, Alex likely would have punched him immediately. The difference was simple. Tom had been  _ around  _ when Ian died. Tom was  _ there  _ when Alex came back after learning that the rest of his family died by Ash’s hands somehow. Tom would  _ never  _ joke about Ash, and Alex knew that.

Yassen twitched, his face warping slightly before he went entirely tense, inhaling sharply. He looked to be a man struck by an epiphany, and Tom knew he had been right with the guess that Yassen did not know his own fate.

Alex said, vulnerable and exposed, “he...Yassen’s not real?”

“He’s real he just happens to be a bit dead,” Tom said, “because bloody hell him choking me was  _ definitely  _ real.”

Yassen shook his head, closing his eyes briefly before they opened with new confidence. He said, with a lack of accent that foreshadowed feral-assassin-mode, “you were operating behind Alex’s back.”

“Yassen, don’t,” Alex said softly, reaching out to grab Yassen’s upper arm gently. Oh,  _ eww,  _ Tom was really worried about the incest or necrophilia thing now.

“What did you go to Smither’s about?” Alex asked Tom quietly, finally trusting him.

Tom exhaled in a rush, thankful his friend believed him. “I wanted to double-check the story! If Ash hurt Yassen, Mate I wanted to make sure nothing would come after you. And Smithers sent me a bloody autopsy report!”

Yassen twitched, then looked at his own hand with a blank expression. Alex shuddered, viscerally disturbed by the reminder of Ash. Tom looked at him worried, and Alex recovered with a weak grin.

“I trust you, Tom,” Alex said finally. “You’re not just my best friend, you’re family to me.”

_ That  _ spoke something, and Yassen withdrew with a visible fascination for his own hand. Alex asked the Russian, “are you alright? I mean uh, besides the uh…”

“I’m dead,” Yassen said quietly, thoroughly confused but somehow distant. He rotated his hand, surveying both sides before staring at his wrist and arm blankly. Yassen said, “I died, in Malta.”

“The uh, autopsy report said you died from disembowelment,” Tom awkwardly explained, nodding to his phone. “That’s what Smither’s sent through. The report said it was Ash, but didn’t really say  _ why.  _ It said that they weren’t uh, supposed to shoot you-.”

“I knew too much,” Yassen said. Yassen was dead but had been so truly alive in the past week- now, he sounded lifeless entirely. “I...I knew too much. Ash was the traitor, he had planted a bomb and I was to warn him…”

Yassen looked at the ground, then skywards with a lost expression. He scoffed once, a low dark chuckle that sounded every bit like an animal in pain.

“Ash killed my family,” Alex said, trying to console the other the best he could. “I...I didn’t kill Ash but...but I was there when he died.”

“He deserves to suffer,” Yassen said dimly.

Then, without reason, Tom’s phone began to ring.

Alex blinked, looking at the  _ restricted number,  _ and held it out for Tom’s hand. Tom accepted it, paused, and accepted the call on speaker. There would be no more lies between them.

_ “Tom! Oh, how happy I am to hear from you, so, you’ll have to pardon my delay. You and Alex need to leave immediately-.” _

“Uh, why?”

Smithers wasted no time, leaping into his next monologue.  _ “Yes yes, I looked into your suspicions and you were right. The files are strange, redacted and shifted in chaos over here. I think if not for your impossible visitor, we’d never know this. Yassen Gregorovich was second on file to a SCORPIA operative known as Hunter, who even I remember was the most devastating force ever known.” _

Alex’s jaw dropped, the turned a silent accusatory finger to Yassen, who responded back with a shrug. Alex mouthed,  _ ‘SCORPIA?’  _ to which Yassen glanced between the phone and Alex, lifting his eyebrows with an unimpressed  _ ‘really?’  _ Alex flushed in embarrassment- Alex was a more vocal opponent of MI6 than the SCORPIA agent, no  _ wonder  _ there had been confusion.

_ “So! I looked deeper. Ash used to be an MI6 operative you know, but some of his files from our side are all redacted. Nothing I couldn’t fix- and with those suspicions Alex gave I too found myself wondering. Ash is on file causing the death of Yassen Gregorovich, and Alex’s parents. But the same timeframe has cross-referenced files heavily marked I must confess- but, I believe Hunter was instead John Rider himself, meaning Ash was not a double agent, but a triple agent!” _

Smithers sounded far too delighted with his detective work for the proportion of the information unveiled. Yassen’s expression remained but the light in his eyes faded to something dim and hollow. Alex inhaled sharply and paled sickly. Tom wanted to laugh or cry but wasn’t sure which.

_ “Ah, am I on speaker, Tom?” _

“Hi Smithers,” Alex croaked, voice warbling. “So...my dad...worked for SCORPIA?”

Smithers fell completely silent. Yassen said then, voice dead and devoid of life, “Hunter died. I failed.”

Smithers chuckled nervously and struggled for words across the phone. Tom said, a bit awkwardly, “at least this  _ is  _ just a necrophilia problem, not an incest one too.”

_ “Excuse me- Alex my boy, you’re...engaging with Cossack?” _

“Oh Christ I’m into corpses,” Alex realized horrified. 

Yassen looked at Alex, similarly horrified and said, “you’re  _ Hunter’s child?” _

“This is such a disaster,” Tom bemoaned. He promptly hung up on Smithers, unwilling to make the situation worse.

Alex and Yassen looked at each other with a holy sort of reverence, eating each other with their eyes and newfound interest. Tom felt like he was intruding as Alex stared at Yassen in his clothes, covering a scar that killed him.

“So,” Alex asked quietly and famished, “what...happened to your throat?”

“Hunter shot a target and saved my life with one bullet,” Yassen said with a strange voice. Alex leaned inwards, fingers twitching but not yet touching. Yassen similarly leaned towards Alex. 

Yassen asked, “you work for MI6?”

“My uncle was in it, his name was Ian,” Alex said, gravitating weirdly close to Yassen. “Ash killed him, but I watched Ash choke on his own vomit like a  _ pig.” _

“Good,” Yassen breathed, orbiting Alex.

Tom said, “O-kay, this is  _ really  _ weird. I’m going inside. You guys can uh, finish your...thing.”

Tom nearly bolted inside, slamming the door behind him and ramming the meat of his palms against his eyes. Hysterically, Tom thought,  _ ‘at least it isn’t incest.’ _

* * *

Alex wasn’t willing to let Yassen go, and at this point, neither Alex nor Tom knew how to release him. Sure it was odd, but as far as they tested Yassen was every bit as human as they were.

He breathed, he slept, he shat and reacted the same to excessive tacos like any normal person. Alex told him, a bit  _ too  _ pleased, that Yassen responded in other areas naturally as well. 

Louie  _ loved  _ Yassen, which amused both boys beyond words. Yassen lugged the dog about and carried it from location to location when its flat face couldn’t keep up with respiratory demands. 

Yassen continued to steal Alex’s clothes and sleep in his bed, aiding with Alex’s physiotherapy as his collarbone began to heal properly. In return, Alex helped with repairing the fascia on Yassen’s abominable wound, which wasn’t in any way necessary and Tom suspected was mostly weird assassin-spy-foreplay. 

None of them wanted to address that technically, Yassen wasn’t alive. Yassen had no identity, no documentation (although the Russian said he knew how to get it), and no place in the world. SCORPIA didn’t know about him, MI6 didn’t know about him. Just Alex and Tom, and flat face King Louie, forcing Yassen to be his personal chariot.

Alex wasn’t willing to let Yassen go, especially not when Yassen began awkwardly explaining what he knew of Hunter. The colour of his eyes, his hobbies and interests. His ritual with shaving with a straight razor, and allergy to shellfish.

“I have an allergy to shellfish,” Alex commented quietly, falling limp to Yassen’s side. Yassen said, equally quiet, “Hunter loved the sea, he taught me to sail.”

“Ian told me that,” Alex confirmed. His shoulders trembled slightly, jerking about with the power of repressing crying through sheer determination. “Ian said his brother was a crackshot.”

“He was,” Yassen agreed, voice hollow and mourning in his own way. “He was the best shot I knew, he taught me what I know.”

Alex said, “I wish I could have met him.”

Yassen exhaled slowly, and very tentatively said, “I never met your mother, but I saw her. You greatly resemble her.”

Alex slumped into Yassen further, staring at nothing and soaking the warmth of their touching sides. Alex asked him quietly, reverently, “can you tell me about her?”

Yassen thought, selecting his words as carefully as he could. It was not that he could not recall the way she looked, or where he was. Yassen knew many languages, various nouns and verbs unique to specific cultures with no true translation. Yassen could speak so many different ways- could describe her in romantic languages or the multiple definitions of East Asian cultures.

Yassen thought that to describe Helen would be impossible without describing Hunter. 

“In...in Russian, we have words that do not translate well,” Yassen said. “I think of Helen and I think  _ vstrepenut'sya.” _

Alex repeated the words, struggling over the difficult pronunciation, “stray-peyah-nutsya?”

“ _ Vstrepenut'sya,”  _ Yassen repeated melodically. “It is...to awaken from sleep, and flutter gently like bird wings, and the beat of your heart. It is...to rouse awake softly, with each heartbeat. That was Helen, to Hunter.” 

Alex hummed quietly, whispering the word, finally, with proper pronunciation, “vstrepenut'sya.”

Yassen agreed, repeating it once more, “vstrepenut'sya.”

* * *

Biggin Hill was a nice little community, built more out of old village-style houses and occasional minor backyard sheep pastures. There were a handful of schools, only one road, and a new bulldog on the street that Louie eyed openly.

Tom was a simple person with simple needs. His best friend (and technically owner of the house), Alex, was not. Alex had an amount of luck that both Tom and Alex both referred to as  _ freaky-fate-bloody-bollocks-you hear me god? Eh? Want me to scream louder? _

Don’t misunderstand- Tom loved his best friend. Tom loved Alex, and all his ridiculous personality quirks and oddities- namely the ridiculous situations and things he brought home. Alex left for long periods of time for work which bordered thinly on global terrorism dependent on the perspective, but Alex made a point to come home whenever he could. Home in Biggin Hill was more than just a house, it was  _ volya, _ a state and place of unconstrained freedom. The sort of relaxation untouched by burden, Alex only felt it at sea or with his family.  _ Volya,  _ Alex was told,  _ often refers to anarchic freedom. _

Alex, of course, beamed. Tom laughed and Yassen looked at him with adoration, and Alex shouted,  _ “anarchy!”  _ __

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this! I really enjoyed writing a more humerous story with both Tom, Alex, and Yassen being idiots with each other.  
> The plot is basically an AU, where instead of Yassen gutting Ash and escaping, Ash proceeds to kill Yassen when Yassen realizes there's a plan to kill Hunter.  
> Thus, Ash kills Yassen, Ian, AND Hunter and Alex is pissed.


End file.
